Florida Knows All About the 1% [View all]

[Atman]

My old home state is the poster child for failed Republican policies...

Florida Knows All About the 1%

Florida is the poster child for the tension between "the 1 percent" and "the 99 percent," a microcosm of the deep-seated ills causing our national, economic malaise. It's way bigger and longer than the recent recession. Our problems have been festering for years, glossed over by ideologues peddling failed policies that an ignorant public has been all-too willing blindly to accept.

In the post-Ayn Rand-Milton Friedman-supply-side-free-market-foolery-everyone-else-be-damned era of unbridled greed, none of the shocking details I'm about to tell you is supposed to matter. We're told to sit back and put our abiding faith in the mystical magic of markets to solve our economic and social problems.

But, like it or not, facts matter — a lot. So, don't read on, or read on and be dismissive, and you'll have to take responsibility for the long-term destruction of the state of Florida — and the nation.

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Since 1999, when Jeb Bush became governor, Florida has been dominated by the Republican Party, the party of the 1 percent — now hijacked by the tea-party extremist fringe. As a result, we have deep-seated, long-standing problems that their short-sighted, ideologically driven solutions have not only failed to solve, but have created and compounded.

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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/columnists/fl-sgcol-oped0219-20120219,0,51733.column